Kathryn Hulme
Kathryn Hulme (January 6, 1900 – August 25, 1981) was an American author and memoirist most noted for her novel The Nun's Story. The book is often misunderstood to be semi-autobiographical.
Kathryn Hulme | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | Kathryn Cavarly Hulme July 6, 1900 San Francisco, California |
| Died | August 25, 1981 (aged 81) Lihue, Kauai, Hawaii |
| Spouse | Leonard D. Geldert (1925–1928) |
Writing
Her 1956 book The Nun's Story was a best-selling novel which was made into an award-winning 1959 movie starring Audrey Hepburn and Peter Finch.
Another work, The Undiscovered Country: A Spiritual Adventure published by Little, Brown & Co. was a description of her years as a student of mystic G. I. Gurdjieff and her eventual conversion to Catholicism. Hulme studied with Gurdjieff as part of a group of eight women known as "The Rope," which included: Solita Solano, Kathryn Hulme, Alice Rohrer, Elizabeth Gordon, Louise Davidson, Georgette Leblanc, Margaret Caroline Anderson and Jane Heap[1]
She is also the author of The Wild Place, a vivid description of her experiences as the UNRRA Director of the Polish Displaced Persons camp at Wildflecken, Germany, after World War II. This work won the Atlantic Non-Fiction Award in 1952.[2]
It was at Wildflecken that Hulme met a Belgian nurse and former nun Marie Louise Habets, who became her lifelong companion. The Nun's Story is a slightly fictionalized biographical account of Habets' life as a nun.
In her 1938 fictionalized autobiography We Lived as Children, Hulme describes a child's perspective of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.
Bibliography
- Arab Interlude, Macrae Smith Company (Philadelphia), 1930
- Desert Night, The Macauley Company (New York), 1932
- We lived as children, A.A. Knopf (New York, London), 1938 (LCCN: 38027542, ASIN: B000GBZZIU)
- The Wild Place, (Atlantic Prize for Nonfiction (1952), Brown Little, 1953, (ISBN 9787100102407)
- The Nun's Story, Pocket Books, 1958 (ASIN: B000CBFXYA)
- The Undiscovered Country: A Spiritual Adventure, Little, Brown & Co. (Boston USA/Toronto CA), 1967; reprinted (Natural Bridge Editions: Lexington MA, 1997) (ISBN 1-891218-03-4)
- Look A Lion In the Eye: On Safari Through Africa, Little, Brown & Co. First edition (1974) (ISBN 0316381403)
- Annie's Captain, Little, Brown and Company (Boston, Toronto), 1961
See also
References
- The Rope Archived 2006-06-16 at the Wayback Machine gurdjieff-legacy.org.
- Campbell, Debra (Winter 2008). "[About the Cover]: The Nun's Story: Another Look at the Postwar Religious Revival". American Catholic Studies. 119 (4): 103–108. JSTOR 44195197. Retrieved 10 February 2023.
External links
- Kathryn Hulme Papers Digital collection at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University
- Kathryn Hulme Papers, Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
- "Too Much to Watch," short radio segment from We Lived as Children at California Legacy Project.